


It’s Not the Ritz, It’s the Four Seasons (Total Landscaping)

by dixiehellcat



Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 2020 US Presidential Election, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bucky Barnes' Negative Self-Image, COVID-19, F/F, Four Seasons Total Landscaping AU, M/M, Misunderstanding, Multi, Multi-Directional Pining, Smol Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers is a little shit, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, War Injuries mentioned, War Veteran Bucky Barnes, not Donald Trump friendly, pre-polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27760315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: Three small businesses, three friends (who might want to be more than friends) and one very strange press conference. Life and love in the weirdest year imaginable.Fills the "framed" square on my Round 4 Tony Stark Bingo card number 4028. (required info collected below)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, background Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanoff
Series: Tony Stark Bingo Round 4 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2009245
Comments: 12
Kudos: 85
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	It’s Not the Ritz, It’s the Four Seasons (Total Landscaping)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a convo in the Tonypalooza discord! Much love to the dilfies, who put up with my brand of crazy. 
> 
> Special thanks to faustess of the TSB server, who suggested the title!
> 
> Bingo specifics:  
> Card Number: 4028  
> Square Filled (Letter AND number AND prompt) T4, framed  
> Ship/Main Pairing: Stuckony, background Peppernat  
> Rating (Gen, Teen, Mature, Explicit) teen  
> Major Tags/Warnings/Triggers: Four Seasons Total Landscaping AU, Multi-directional Pining, Smol Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers is a Little Shit, No Powers AU, not Trump friendly, Veteran Bucky Barnes, War Injuries mentioned, Pre-Polyamory, Misunderstanding, Covid-19  
> Summary: three small businesses, three friends (who might want to be more than friends) and one very strange press conference.  
> 

Bucky came home from Iraq with a prosthetic left arm (thanks to a close encounter with an IED), a shitty outlook, and no real prospects. He holed up in Brooklyn for a spell, the neighborhood where he grew up, and was halfway to falling into a beer bottle and never finding his way back out, like ants on a summer day, when his cousin Arnie called from Philly with an offer. His in-laws’ cremation business there needed help, and for all Bucky’s issues, he prided himself on still being as dependable and as hard a worker as he had been before his extended vacation in scenic Saladin province. Besides, a change of scene might be good medicine. So he stuffed what little meant anything to him into a bag—mainly his dog tags, a couple of favorite books, and some sketches drawn by a boy he had had a crush on back in high school—and decamped for the cradle of democracy.

After a while working various jobs at the Valley Cremation Center and the reception hall next door they rented out for family services and gatherings, Bucky got a firm offer. He could dial down the intensity, and he cleaned up fairly well, and he really did care about the sad families who came to send their loved one off to wherever they believed they would go from this shithole vale of tears; so Arnie asked him to take over managing the place.

It was located in an industrial working-class part of town: a little rough, but Bucky wasn’t concerned. It was definitely no Basra. He met some local kids who tried to act tough, but he laughed in their faces and rolled up his sleeves; the combination of his lack of fear and a good look at his arm won him their respect. When he wasn’t doing paperwork or serving customers, he liked to walk around the neighborhood and got acquainted with the proprietors of the surrounding businesses, like the Maximoffs, a Roma family who ran the diner on the corner, and a walking disaster named Clint who operated, of all things, an archery range. 

The landscaping business across the street caught his attention one day when he was out for an amble; something was rolling around in the fenced-in parking lot. It looked like a robotic arm on wheels, holding a rake in a claw-like clasp. On another day, Bucky noted a small ruckus brewing on the sidewalk in front of the adult bookstore next door to the landscaper, and having left most of his self-preservation skills back in Iraq, he wandered over to check it out. It wasn’t much of a picket line, just half a dozen people waving Bibles and a couple of signs. The lead guy was confronting a small and very angry blond man who cut him off mid-verse. “I know what your problem is,” the little guy yelled. “You’re such a fuckin’ asshole nobody’ll fuck you. Frustration’s a bitch. C’mon in and I’ll sell you something to help you out with that. I know just the thing, it’ll knock ya out. Literally. I got this one dildo in here, swear to God I blacked out for ten minutes first time I tried it out.” One woman stuttered something. “Of course I road-test all my products, ma’am. Otherwise, how’m I gonna stand behind ‘em & help my customers out?” 

With a jolt, Bucky realized he recognized that particular combination of fierce duty and foul-mouthed sarcasm. He nudged his way through the scrum and called, “Steve?”

Sure enough, those huge blue eyes that flashed his way and lit like Roman candles belonged to the guy he went to school with, the artist whose sketches he’d carried from Brooklyn to Baghdad and back again: the little guy with the big heart, and big mouth, who he’d had his first boy crush on. “Bucky Barnes?” Steve exclaims. “You aren’t with this bunch, are ya? I wouldn’t’ve expected you to go wingnut.” 

“Hell no,” Bucky grinned, “and I sure didn’t expect to find you going absolutely feral on a pack of fundies in front of a sex toy shop.”

“ _My_ sex toy shop,” Steve chortled, the harassers seeming to cease to exist for him, and invited Bucky in to catch up. “I went on to art school,” he explained over beers in his apartment over the shop, “but that didn’t get me anywhere. After my parents got divorced my old man moved here and he and his new wife started this place up. He’s got Alzheimer’s, now, and she can’t take care of him and run the place too, so she called me up and asked if I’d take it over. It’s—fun, it really is. You’d be surprised how much good you can do somebody just by offering a listening ear and something that vibrates.”

Bucky and Steve renewed their friendship, and Bucky got near-constant free entertainment from Steve’s hijinks. He would never forget the day a city inspector, a very attractive redheaded woman, came into the bookstore to do the yearly licensing check. Steve decided she was a little too uptight, and figured he’d fuck with her. Turned out he was the one who got played; when he brandished the biggest dildo he had in stock (no lie, the damn thing was the size of his forearm, it even scared Bucky) at her, she just gave Steve a cool look and said, “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Steve nearly went into an asthma attack laughing. “I like you,” he said when he could talk again. Her name was Natasha, and she became a regular customer, and sometimes just dropped in to hang out. Bucky watched closely, though he tried not to be obvious about it; but Steve didn’t seem to have a romantic interest in her, or really in anybody. For his own part, while Bucky’s crush had returned in a big way, he didn’t even know if Steve liked guys. Nobody was likely to be attracted to a guy missing an arm, though, so he’d have to be content with their friendship. 

On a bright and cool morning, Bucky and Steve were walking back from a visit to Clint down the block. In his usual walking-catastrophe mode, the archer had fractured his leg tripping over the extension cord to his coffee maker, so they had volunteered to make a snack run to the corner gas station for him. The chain link fence around Four Seasons’ parking lot was open, and all manner of machinery was visible, including some stuff that didn’t look like anything one would use to clear snow or cut grass. As they paused, the rolling mechanical arm appeared, followed by the sexiest guy (next to Steve) Bucky had ever seen. His dark hair was a hot mess, his t-shirt was streaked with grease, and his worn jeans covered a transcendent ass. He seemed to be…scolding the mechanical thing? That was what it sounded like he was doing anyway, while waving what looked like a glass of whiskey, at 10:30 in the morning. Bucky’s jaw dropped slightly, and from behind him he heard Steve let out a small but audible grunt (well, that might answer a question Bucky hadn’t dared ask him yet). “You know that guy?” an impish impulse made him ask.

“I wish,” Steve said fervently.

Bucky reined in his libido. “Well, let’s introduce ourselves to our neighbor then, what do ya say?”

Tony Rhodes, proprietor of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, was friendly but seemed reserved, almost shy. Steve, being his bull-headed self, decided they needed to coax him out of his shell; he was all for overwhelming the guy with friendship, which meant as usual Bucky had to be the voice of reason. They never saw anybody show up who looked to be visiting on a social level, just customers, employees picking up jobs and dropping off gear, two guys who they guessed were Tony’s site managers, and a pack of teenagers who worked part time for him. “Maybe he’s real private,” Bucky argued. “I can’t remember even seeing him coming and going. Or maybe he just likes to be alone.”

They found out differently when Tony started to turn up at their doors, on one pretext or another, and sticking around as though he just wanted some company. He was amazingly smart, and piss-your-pants funny. Both Bucky and Steve got stuck with nicknames, something he seemed prone to—they’d never heard him call either of his site managers by actual names. Bucky was usually Buckaroo, and Steve was Mr. Roarke, because of Fantasy Island. Tony drank a bit more than he probably should; God knew Bucky knew the signs of that, and a hundred possible reasons why. Even polluted, though, Tony was good company, despite the fact that he only tried to sing when drunk (emphasis on tried) and usually to serenade Steve with the rock chestnut _Dear Mister Fantasy_. Bucky was tempted, a few times, to say something about the booze, but he didn’t feel it was his place, although sometimes he caught Tony staring at whatever was in his glass with a sadness that took his breath away.

It didn’t all fit together until some time later. The three were hanging out regularly, and on the night in question, they were sitting around inside Tony’s garage area eating pizza. The rolling arm, actually an experimental landscaping robot Tony had built, was trying to serve as a waiter and failing miserably. (Tony kept trying out and abandoning fancy names for it, and just kept calling it Dummy, so Bucky and Steve had followed suit and treated it pretty much like a beloved but dim-witted pet.) 

The day had been a trying one, from what Tony let slip between bites of pizza and swigs of several beers in succession. The little tv set perched on a workbench was tuned to the news and some anchor’s breathless report about Donald Trump running for president. Bucky wanted to laugh, but like most New Yorkers, he knew the guy was enough of a con man he might pull it off. Tony started to swear under his breath. “Little Donnie’s everything Howard wanted me to be,” he muttered around his current bottle. “Hope he’s enjoying it but I doubt it. Sucks to be him, I guess…” The mutters continued for a few moments, before Tony’s head jerked upward as if he was just realizing he’d been talking out loud. The sad and bitter air morphed into something close to fear as he glanced over at Steve and Bucky. “Um, guys, I hate to throw you out, but I got a long day tomorrow,” he said hastily.

“Sure, okay,” Bucky replied, “but if you need to talk something out, we’re good to listen. Well, I am,” he added with a grin and nod toward where Steve was sprawled on an air mattress on the concrete floor. Given that it was made up like some semblance of a bed, Bucky wondered sometimes if Tony actually had a home or just slept here.

“M’not asleep,” Steve grumbled, one eye opening to glare at Bucky, “and I’m good for listening too Tony, but don’t feel like you got to spill anything you don’t want to.” The other eye popped open. “Unless it’s illegal. If it’s illegal, you definitely got to spill that.”

Tony let out a sharp little laugh, followed by a sigh. “My last name isn’t Rhodes,” he began. “It’s Stark. My old man was Howard Stark, of Stark Industries infamy. We…didn’t get along. My mom was a buffer between us, some. But she died when I was barely out of college, and Howard was left to deal with me. I was already falling down the same rabbit hole of alcohol that he did, so even if he’d wanted to help, he wouldn’t’ve known how.” Bucky heard more than saw Steve sit up, and cut his eyes over to meet Steve’s; everybody who had grown up in New York City in the past twenty years had stories to tell, or at least had heard them secondhand, about the rebel genius heir to the industrialist inventor’s fortune. 

“Jarvis, who worked for us, helped raise me, but he died not long after mom did. Howard let me go my own way, picked my brain for ideas he could make a buck off, but that was all, for a good while. Then his business partner decided he coveted the empire, so he needed to get me out of the way. He embezzled, and framed me for it, told Howard I was blowing millions in Vegas. Joke was on him—he didn’t know that when I did go to Vegas, I tipped _very_ well, well enough that his cheap-ass attempts to pay people off to lie about me fell flat. 

“His other mistake was in hiring somebody too competent, a woman in accounting who found discrepancies and went straight to Howard with them. Obie got caught and sent to jail. Howard was going to promote the accounting woman, but I stole her to be my assistant. No,” he held up his hand at the lecherous grin that brightened Steve’s listening face, “it was not like that. I do have limits, and one of them has always been to never ever sleep with an employee. Pepper became one of the best friends I ever had though, and when Howard died I only stayed long enough to shut down the weapons manufacturing division and turn SI in a new direction. Then I turned the whole deal over to Pepper, made her CEO, and dropped out of sight. 

“We stay in touch regularly—she insisted on putting me on payroll as a consultant, which they can actually afford the way she runs things, and which makes me _her_ employee now, technically, so still no hanky-panky, even if she was partial to males, which I don’t think she is. Never asked, none of my business. Anyway, that salary goes in a bank account for emergencies—I’m making my own way here, Four Seasons isn’t a plaything. I’m using it as a lab too, sort of, working on developing a new generation of AI tech. Dummy here is the prototype, such as he is,” Tony added with a fond pat on the robot’s strut. 

“So, why landscaping?” Steve asked. “And why Philly?”

“Thought landscaping was far enough from my old life to stay hidden, to begin with, but I’ve actually come to like it. Plants don’t stab you in the back. As for why Philly…” Tony shrugged. “Good food, close to New York but not too close, and my best pal from college is from here so I heard lots of stories and his parents adopted me. Almost literally; I asked to use their last name and they approved, before they passed away. Besides, a town with the motto _fuck around and find out_ sounded like a great place to start a new life.”

Bucky and Steve both laughed, and this time when Tony laughed it sounded more genuine. “Anyway,” he finished, “I’m, um, sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. Not many people know, other than Rhodey and Happy, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Your secret’s safe with us, buddy,” Bucky pledged and Steve nodded vigorously in agreement. Bucky took a drink of his beer and added, “Although if I’d known you were a tech guru, I’d’ve asked you what you charge to do some maintenance on my arm.”

“Oh hell, buckaroo, I bet I can build you a better one!”

Much later when they finally parted ways for the night, Bucky asked Steve outside on the sidewalk, “You think he’s serious about still, y’know, being pals? I mean, you know as well as I do, the Starks were _rich_ rich, obscenely rich. What’s he gonna want to do with two punks from Brooklyn?”

“Drink beer, eat pizza and talk shit, sounds to me like,” Steve returned. “He’s Tony, and we knew that before anything else. I think he just needs friends, Buck. Wait and see, I guess, but doesn’t seem like anything’s changed, if we don’t change how we act.”

Bucky wasn’t about to let Steve know he wished for more from Tony, or from Steve himself for that matter. Dammit, why was he so torn, having feelings for both of them? He swallowed back the words, nodded and let it go. Steve was right, too, apparently; if anything, baring his past to them had drawn Tony closer to them both. Bucky even noticed he seemed to be marinading his issues a lot less.

They met Pepper when Tony dragged her into Fantasy Island one day in hopes of embarrassing her. She just gave him a tolerant look that she obviously had given him thousands of times before, then proceeded to talk vibrator specs with Steve in a knowledgeable way that made Bucky a little weak in the knees, and he didn’t even go for females. As it turned out, Pepper did; and so did Natasha, as the guys learned when one had dropped by the store to shop and the other arrived to return some borrowed books. The heat was instant, and Bucky was observing the flirting and plotting a discreet campaign of matchmaking when Steve ruined his plan by groaning, “Oh for fuck’s sake, you two, get a fuckin’ room already. Redheads, I swear t’God.”

Over the months and years that followed, the friendships bloomed. Tony literally howled the day he saw Bucky drag Steve off a picketer at Philly Pride by the scruff of his neck. “Oh,” he gasped once his laughter had calmed enough for him to talk sensibly again. “Damn man’s like a Rottweiler in a Chihuahua body.” Steve started getting back into his art, encouraged by Bucky and Tony, and began to email his portfolio around. He entertained them one night by telling them about a vivid dream he had had about a superhero in a flying suit of armor. “When the suit opened up you stepped out, Tony! I think my subconscious is tellin’ me to enlist your assistance. Would ya be my tech consultant, if I try drawing a comic?” Tony was thrilled and readily agreed, and his newest nickname for Steve became Cap, short for Captain Bravo, another superhero character Steve created.

For his part, Bucky’s life continued pretty much as it had been, just the regular circle of work and friends. Seeing Tony and Steve draw closer made him a little sad, sometimes; he was just waiting to see them admit they were falling for each other, but a little corner of him was still selfish enough that he wasn’t sure he could play matchmaker, just yet. He put his extra energy into helping out a local veterans’ group; too many of his brothers and sisters in arms were getting left out in the cold, and he wasn’t having it while he had breath and muscle to do anything about it.

Then, came Covid-19. Tony had finally admitted the previous summer that he did indeed live in the garage of Four Seasons Total, so with Steve living over his shop, the two of them spent even more time together. Bucky’s apartment wasn’t far away, but he figured early on that he should stay away to minimize any risk of carrying the bug in, especially to Steve, who had asthma. Apparently, that did not sit well with either Steve or Tony. “What the Cheez-Whiz smothered fuck are you doin’?” Steve snarled when the two cornered Bucky in the crematorium event room (at a safe six feet’s remove) and obliged him to explain why he had been avoiding them. “Do I look like a fragile fuckin’ flower to you?”

“Maybe a stinkweed,” Bucky allowed.

Tony hovered in the background, struggling not to guffaw. “What’s your social life like, Buck?” he pressed. “Are you out on the social circuit? Chatting up debutantes, dancing till your shoes fall off? Lots of places you might pick up a contagious virus?”

“No,” Bucky confessed. “My ‘social life’ as you call it is nonexistent.” He did not say it was because he spent most of his nights of late wishing he was with Tony and Steve. “Back and forth to work, grocery shopping, that’s it.”

“Well, there ya go,” Steve declared. “Tony’s sorta-cousin is gonna make fun masks for us to wear dealin’ with the public. You get some too, unless you want basic black. Might be more appropriate for your line of work, but you’d look kinda like an assassin.” He considered. “That’d be sorta hot though. Wouldn’t it, Tony?”

“Definitely hot,” Tony agreed. “Give it up, Buck. You’re part of our bubble now.” 

Bucky needed that bubble, and that support, desperately as days and weeks and months ran together in the most bizarre year of his life. The crematorium’s business was brisk, but while more bodies came in, fewer families did. Those who did were either masked and shaken, or unmasked and angry. They got angrier when he wouldn’t let them into the building without masks, but he was not putting himself at any more risk, nor his friends. If it cost them business, so be it. 

The time he spent with Tony and Steve was all that lightened his mood. Though the reception hall was closed, he was at work from dawn to dark, keeping the furnace open more hours and juggling schedules when employees got sick or had to quarantine after exposure and hope they wouldn’t get sick. Steve’s trade was brisk also, taking phone and online orders and packing purchases up for customers to drive up and pick up. Landscaping was considered essential by the state, so Tony stayed open too. In fact, he was able to pick up several more part-time workers for Four Seasons Total, people he knew through his insanely dense networking skills, who had lost their day jobs. Keeping the lawn mowers running let him get then all decent paychecks and all the extra help he could slip them. (Bucky suspected a hefty chunk of Tony’s consultant salary from Stark Industries was going to that cause.) 

In his spare time, what the fuck ever that was, Tony was trying to design a walk-through sterilizer that would kill the virus. “Sounds great,” Bucky praised him. “Way better than Trump’s idea to shove a fluorescent tube up your ass.”

After Steve recovered his breath from laughing, he said, “That gives me an idea for a new product. Think I’ll give this company rep I know a call in the morning. Tony might help me make it light up…” He drifted off, looking for his sketch pad and mumbling to himself. 

Laughter really was the best medicine, Bucky reflected, and the only thing that was getting him through the increasingly stressful days of a pandemic and a raucous presidential election running side by side. At least by the time election day came, he knew he had made his choice, as had his pals. It wasn’t a surprise that Philly went for Joe Biden, nor that Trump raised cain like the spoiled brat he was, screaming he had been robbed. Seriously, Bucky had hated the guy since he was a kid, as most New Yorkers, rich or poor, did, and shipping him off to his swamp in Florida sounded like the best possible thing for all concerned.

The Friday after the election was one of the longest and most emotionally draining days Bucky could remember. Occasionally on days like that, Tony or Steve, whichever one saw him first, flatly refused to let him attempt the drive back to his place. They had both even taken to keeping a change of clothes for him at their places. On this night, it was Steve, and Bucky ended up sucking down some leftover paprika chicken from the Maximoffs’ diner (still barely hanging on, mostly due to the neighborhood’s support) and collapsing on the old couch in the apartment over Fantasy Island. He was too tired to do more than register a faint wistful realization that Steve was only feet away before he fell asleep.

The next morning Bucky had just showered and thrown on a clean shirt, and was drinking coffee with Steve before going to open up, when downstairs he heard a door slam followed by feet pounding up their way and the turn of a latch. A moment later, Tony appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Steve! Cap, you gotta help me out, I—” He halted when he spied Bucky, cup halfway to his mouth. “Oops. Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

 _Don’t I wish_ , Bucky thought wryly. “Not interrupting a thing,” he told Tony and got to his feet, forcing himself to smile. “Stevie, I’ll straighten up the couch where I slept, so you two can talk.”

“Actually, I could use your help too, Bucky,” Tony blurted. “I, um, may have just let Rudy Giuliani book a press conference in my parking lot, and I probably need all the hands I can get.”

Almost to the doorway and ready to slide past Tony, Bucky froze. He was looking past Tony’s shoulder out into the living room—it was just easier, sometimes, not to be reminded he wanted not one but two guys he couldn’t have—but the words unsettled him, and he slowly turned his head to meet Tony’s huge dark eyes with his. “Tony?” he said quietly. “It’s awful early in the morning for you to be that drunk.” Bucky knew; he’d been that drunk this early in the morning, more times than he cared to think about, but he wasn’t sure even he had ever been plastered hard enough in daylight to concoct this crazy a delusion, and he'd hardly seen Tony with anything more potent than a beer in months.

Tony’s eyes didn’t look glazed, though. In fact, he looked rattled, but totally sober. “The fuck?” he frowned. “No, Buck, I haven’t had anything stronger than coffee. Although maybe I need something stronger. See, I got a phone call, this dweeb said he was with the president’s legal team and they wanted to use my place to meet with the press. At first I figured it was a prank call, so I said Sure you do, this isn’t the Four Seasons hotel, you know that, right? But the guy started in about how this area of town was more Trump-friendly, which, doubtful, but still; and how my lot has a security fence and it’s close to a freeway exit so it’s perfect…and I went holy fuck, this is either the best-thought out prank ever, or it’s legit. And, hey, Trump’s a son of a bitch, and if his crew is this stupid, who am I to argue? But if it’s legit, there’s a small army of people descending on the block in like, less than two hours, so, um, help?” 

“Course we’ll help,” Steve returned instantly. “Give us a couple minutes and we’ll meet you down in your lot.”

Looking less panicky and more relieved, Tony was gone in a rush. Bucky shook his head vigorously to clear it. “2020, man,” he said, then rounded on Steve. “You just leave the door unlocked down there? Fuck, Rogers, it’s a wonder you haven’t been robbed blind or beaten up, or worse.” 

Steve blinked. “Tony’s got a key,” he said as though it was self-evident, and Bucky realized it should have been. He knew they were tight, but didn’t realize it had gone that far yet. He was glad for them, and embarrassed he might have inadvertently cockblocked them last evening, and a little bit inappropriately sad too. That lasted all of a second until Steve went on, “Tony borrows stuff from the shop, DVDs, magazines, what have you. He doesn’t sleep much, apparently, so sometimes he returns it in the middle of the night. I trust him. Hell, one morning I went down to open up, and he’d upgraded my stock tracking software overnight. Said he was bored.” Steve shrugged and grinned, and tossed his dishes into the sink while Bucky stood and felt confused all over again.

He shoved all that aside as he hurried over to his office long enough to give Sam, his assistant manager, a heads up, then crossed the street and went to work helping Tony clear the back parking lot of Four Seasons Total, moving equipment inside and securing it. Dummy was confined to a safe enclosed space in Tony’s office, along with his Mark Two snow shoveling bot. Like its older sibling, it was sort of a disaster, but a cute one; Tony kept trying to come up with a cool name for it, but ended up hollering _hey you_ at it most of the time. The three were joined by Tony’s enthusiastic crew of weekend teens until Jim arrived and shepherded them off to go do actual work. “Good,” Tony muttered. “Gotta be honest, not sure I trust Harley not to lift half the press’ gear.”

At one point, Steve went missing, and Bucky found him back in his shop flipping through his video inventory. “I’m trying to remember which one has the loudest soundtrack,” he smirked. “Gonna blast it during the presser.”

“No, you are not,” Bucky said sternly and hauled him back out despite his protests. “We all hate the orange fucker, but this is Tony’s business reputation on the line. He’s worked too damn hard for it, and we are not acting a fool and embarrassing him.”

Steve looked abashed. “Yeah, okay,” he said, then added, “but once it’s over, then we can troll ‘em, right?” Bucky’s grin was all the reply he needed give.

Tony was still half convinced it really was a prank, until huge black SUVs full of people started to fill the narrow street. A troop of staffers pushed past them and set to work, covering the shop's garage door with campaign signs and placing a pressboard podium in front, just steps away from reels of garden hoses and lawn equipment. When two began wiring up a sketchy-looking sound system, Tony’s sneer was obvious even behind his foliage-print face mask. (Bucky had gone with the ninja-black at first, but finally yielded to a bit of whimsy and asked Tony’s semi-cousin for a couple with skulls and bones fabric. Steve teased him for going pirate, but Steve didn’t have room to talk considering his favorite mask was printed with tiny rainbow penises.)

“You guys gotta take those rags off your faces,” one minion snarled. Tony blinked and folded his arms, and Bucky discreetly snagged Steve’s shirt collar lest he hurl himself into a fight. After a few moments of steady silent regard, the minion rolled his eyes. “Fine, pussies, just stay outta camera range.”

“Gladly,” Tony said under his breath as they stepped well away. “I’d rather nobody have a chance of recognizing me anyway. Why, _why_ did I let my desire to troll this clown show outweigh my survival instincts?”

“Because you have no survival instincts?” Bucky guessed. Tony gave him a shove and the finger, but the crinkles at the corners of his eyes communicated his true amusement.

When Giuliani stomped up in front of the gathering throng of non-socially-distanced reporters, all three friends shook their heads. New Yorkers had known he wasn’t the golden ‘America’s mayor’ of his PR, but seeing him raving nonsense was frankly pitiful. When another man went to the mike to spout accusations of fraudulent voting, Steve poked Bucky. “Doesn’t that look like Dennis Shane’s cousin? Remember, the guy that lived in our old neighborhood? Dennis never let him come by ‘cause he’d been in trouble for waggling his dick in front of little girls?”

Bucky squinted. “Not sure but it does look like him.” Steve snickered, a very particular noise that did not mean he was amused. Bucky gave him the evil eye, because that noise always means he was up to something. 

Mercifully, the mess didn’t go on for long before a reporter scrolling their phone suddenly yelled that the TV networks were calling the election for Biden. The press began to scatter, leaving their would-be subjects sputtering. Steve, his efforts to interrupt the business via loud moans from some porn DVD thwarted, settled for yelling, “Hey guys! Come gimme some business. I’ll even give you a discount, I know you’re on the road chasing this circus so you’re probably lonely.”

One of Giuliani’s hangers-on headed toward Steve, but Bucky smoothly intercepted him. “Pussy snowflake libtards,” the guy scowled. “Faggots, maybe. Definitely Biden supporters, right?” 

“Why would I back him?” Bucky lied, all innocence. “Your orange boy’s been real good for my business this year.” He waved a hand across the street toward the crematorium. The guy paled and backed off, his unmasked mouth slack. Bucky wondered briefly if he was really that big a wuss about the deceased, then realized the long sleeve of his sweatshirt had scooted up to reveal his prosthetic arm. 

The distraction hadn’t gone on long, but long enough, or too long. Bucky looked around for Steve and spotted him too late, leading a band of reporters up the sidewalk and ushering them into his shop. With a small sigh, he gave up and went to help Tony clear out his place.

By afternoon, the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference was the talk of the nation, probably the planet, if Bucky’s peeks at social media were any indication. It was no surprise when a report that one of Trump’s voter-fraud witnesses was a past sex offender broke, attributed to ‘an anonymous source familiar with the past matter’. _I’m changing your name in my phone to Anonymous _, Bucky texted Steve.__

 _Fuck you very much_ , Steve replied.

Despite his best efforts, Tony did have a brief moment of fame. He admitted he thought about quelling it, but everyone except Trump-lovers seemed to be having a great time with the whole thing. Plus, nobody in the media rush appeared to connect Tony Rhodes, hard-working landscaper and mechanic caught up in politics through no fault of his own, with Anthony Stark, genius billionaire libertine who had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth years before. (The masks helped.) He seized the moment, though, and turned it to advantage beyond himself. He updated his Facebook page with links to area businesses, featured reviews, and asked his many new online followers to patronize them. 

By Monday morning, Tony had conceived a line of RAKE NEWS-emblazoned merchandise to sell through his website. Steve busily sketched a logo for t-shirts and coffee mugs, featuring Dummy with his rake, between filling a flood of new orders for Fantasy Island. Bucky stayed busy all day too, but met his friends over a celebratory dinner Tony had had delivered from another neighborhood joint, Odinson Brothers’ Barbecue. “This is perfect, Cap!” Tony was exclaiming when Bucky walked into the garage and greeted Dummy and Hey You. “I’ll roll the design out in the morning and start taking pre-orders. People aren’t flush with cash, but my in box is full of requests, so I think they’ll sell like Wanda’s boyfriend’s pancakes. Lots of funds for local covid relief, the vets’ groups, pride organizations—"

“For—you’re not selling for yourse—” Steve stuttered, then jumped up from his seat on a mower, grabbed Tony’s face between his hands and planted a big kiss on him. Tony looked shocked when Steve backed up, but not at all upset. 

_Ohh, here we go_ , finally, Bucky thought. Carefully, he gathered his plate and cup and got to his feet. It was about damn time those two quit dancing around and got on the same page. He guessed it made him both considerate and self-serving, though, that he didn’t intend to stay around while they did it. 

He barely took two steps, though, before both their heads swung around like they were on the same gimbal. “Bucky!” they yelped, almost in unison. “Where’re you going?”

“Well, I’ve been waiting for you to figure out you like each other, and since it looks like that might just be happening, far be it from me to get in the way of enlightenment dawning.”

Tony sputtered then, and gestured from Steve to Bucky. “But you two, aren’t you…”

Bucky shook his head. “Nope. Though not from lack of me—" He slapped his prosthetic hand over his mouth and nearly split his lip, the sting bringing him back to himself before he let too much slip.

It was too late. Steve approached, with those eyes of his, and Tony was right beside him with those eyes of _his_. “Buck,” Steve said slowly, “you never said anything.”

“Of course not,” Bucky groaned. “I thought _you_ two were—I knew you liked him, remember that first day we saw him out in the parking lot putting Dummy through his paces? That noise you made wasn’t exactly a burp or a fart.”

“ _You’re_ the fella whose jaw nearly got skinned on the asphalt when he turned around and his backside wiggled!” Steve retorted. 

Bucky hadn’t thought it was possible for Tony’s enormous dark eyes to get any bigger, but they did, and Bucky just wanted to dissolve into the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West with a bucket of water thrown over her head. “You…both…like me?” was all Tony could get out. 

“Apparently so,” Steve said, his blue eyes on fire, holding Bucky’s without mercy, and a smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth. “If you’re up for that. I’ve kind of had a thing for Bucky since high school.” Bucky nearly did have a cardiac at that. “And you, c’mon Tony, you’re hard for anybody to resist. Pepper and Nat both check you out, and you know they’re crazy about each other. Wanda’s brother’s a track star, and he nearly trips over his feet when you walk into the diner.” Tony was utterly speechless by now, and Bucky was right in the same boat with him, but Steve was in complete command. “And,” he added, looking away from Bucky at last and jabbing a finger at Tony, “you’ve been borrowing those threesome DVDs!”

“Research!” Tony fired back. “Research is important. My playboy days are way in the rearview mirror, and…well, I wasn’t nearly as enamored of any of those people as I am of you two. You make me laugh. I don’t think I ever fell for anybody that did that.”

Bucky finally got his mouth back online. “I, um, didn’t figure either of you would be interested in a guy who’s missing a pretty important part. Not _that_ part, y’know, but still—”

He gestured with his prosthetic arm, and Tony burst into half-hysterical laughter. “You’re kidding, right? I’ve been fantasizing about having that down my pants for months.”

Steve’s smirk bloomed into an evil, evil grin. “Tech like that,” he said in a voice gone abruptly low and seductive, “an argument could be made it’s the ultimate sex toy. So, totally in my line of work.” 

Tony licked his lips. “Now you’ve got me thinking upgrades, Mr. Fantasy. Not sure it’s so much the arm that’s the sex toy, though, as the fella attached to it.”

Bucky could hardly believe his ears as Tony clasped his prosthetic hand, and Steve his other one. They looked at each other, then at Bucky, with matching looks of earnest sincerity. “So what do you say?” Steve asked. “if you aren’t into it, that’s fine, I—we—”

Bucky cut him short. “Aaah, shut up and kiss me, both of you, before I decide I’m imagining all this.”

“ _All_ this?” Tony chuckled. “If that shitshow that took place out back here the other day originated in your brain, I don’t know whether to run in terror or try to placate you as a god.”

“Definitely not a god,” Bucky said. “Though you would look mighty good on your knees.”

“He would,” Steve concurred, with an appraising look Tony's way.

Tony gaped. “So would you!” he burst out. “And you too for that matter. I’m not gonna be ganged up on here—”

“No, you are not,” Steve cackled. He reached for Tony, and Bucky pulled them both into his arms. “No taking sides. Plenty of everything to go ‘round.”

“Plenty,” Bucky agreed, while he kissed every cheek, nose and forehead his mouth could get to. This wasn’t something he had expected, but certainly wasn’t something he was about to turn down. Maybe the year was turning around.

**Author's Note:**

> note: since this verse is so different from any canon one, I thought I should say the variant spellings of Dummy and Hey You are also intentional. lol. Also, you may notice that if HYDRA exists in this verse, they did not kill the Starks as in canon; Maria died about the same time period, judging from what Tony tells Steve and Bucky, but most likely from natural causes.


End file.
